Nama Chocolate (Japanese truffles!)

These Nama Chocolates are absolutely delicious! I’ve used the recipe from Just One Cookbook|Nama Chocolate written by Nami and they are fairly simple to make (mistakes take some time to fix though! But more on that later) – similar in texture to French truffles but I believe less difficult to make! My last attempt at truffles was not the easiest one (I had a list of ingredients, instructions and mistakes!).

Favourite parts of this recipe:

• No rolling involved! Saved me a mess to clean up.
• Simple ingredients (only three ingredients in total!)
  

Troubles I ran into:

• Overheating chocolate will make it separate - it became oily and slick T_T

  I’ve done this before! Can’t believe I forgot my own lesson from the last time I made truffles!
• Cutting the pieces I noticed that some sections was crumbling =[

Trouble shooting:

• If you've overheated the chocolate, let it sit in the fridge for 10 minutes or until the oils have become semi-soild. Take it out of the fridge at that time and stir the oil back in.

  pouring the chocolate into a pan before putting it in the fridge will quicken the cooling process
• Use a thin long knife to prevent crumbling and wash it in hot water each time you make a cut – thicker knives will crumble the edge.

Tips:

• To coat the pieces evenly in coco powder place a dozen pieces or so into a small bowl and dust the pieces with coco powder, then toss it like you would a salad until all pieces are evenly coated. Add more coco if required.
• To chop the chocolate up, make sure it’s at room temperature (do not refrigerate before chopping!) and use a large butcher’s knife (the kind with a blunt edge at the top). Position the knife about 2-3mm into the chocolate and press down on both ends of the knife when chopping so you flake off pieces of chocolate. It’ll seriously work your upper body strength!
• If you don’t have heavy cream available just buy a cream with >35% milk fat content (in Australia you’ll want to buy Pure Cream)
• To keep these delights, place them in a container, cover the top with a sheet of paper towel and shut the lid. The paper towel should absorb any condensation that appears. To freshen up the nama chocolate toss them in a bowl of coco powder before serving if desired after removing them from their container.

Future alterations:

• I’d love to try coating it with green tea powder next time I make it! But I may have to use a milk chocolate or a milk chocolate+dark chocolate mix for it as the green tea powder is quite bitter by itself.

It took me about 2 hours to finish this – mostly because I had to fix the above mistakes but it should reasonably take an hour to complete (chopping up the chocolates took me 20 mins to do >.<!). The flaky dense texture of these chocolates are divine and the instant melt-in-your-mouth sensation is a delight! A great gift for anyone/any occasion!

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